The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1887-04-07
NO. a
THE LAKE THAT JOSEPH MADE.
Recent Discovery of the Bed of an An.
cicnt Reservoir of the Nile.

cicnt Reservoir of the Nile.
The European press published the
statement recently that the Egyptian
minister of public works had decided 10
utilize the recent discovery of the bed OF
ancient Lake Moeris. lie wishes to re-
build the old canal that nearly 1000
years ago was dug between the basin and
the Nile, and make this great depression
about sixty miles southwest of Cairo
once more the reservoir for the surplus
waters of the Nile at flood Iio has,
therefore, declined the offer made
through Mr.. c. Whitehouse to restore
Lake Moeris.by private enterprise TO its
ancient function of receiving and dis
pensing the waters of the Nile.
This is a proposal to repeat in modern
times a great engineering enterprise
which the patriarch Joseph is said by
some authorities to have carried out. 1t
is all the moro noteworthy because the
fact that Lake Moeris ever existed has
been denied for centuries. Linaut some
forty years ago revived the notion that
Herodotus told the truth after all, but
not until 1852 did the best geographical
authorities agree that there was onco
Lake Moeris, and that its ancient bed
had been found.
Of the wonders that Herodotus des-
cribed rs existing near Memphis, two,
the Labyrinth and Lake Moeris have
been unknown to modern research. lie
and other ancient writers agreed in des-
cribing Lake Moeris, as a reservoir of the
Nile, 4J0 miles i'll circumference, 800 feet
c,,1I DrH q 1.
species. There were dykes at The mouths
of the canal by which the engineers
| stored up or distributed its water supply.
| The lake was mostly bordered by the
| desert. On its banks lived niultitudcs of
| fishermen, who caught and Salted tho
| fish that bred freely in the lake, which
owed its existence to one or more arti-
| fetal channels connecting it with the
Herodotus, Strabo Diodoris, Phny,
and other Greek and Latin writers have
been freely charged with falsehood or
exaggoration in what they wrote about
| Lake Moeris. C. Ptolemy placed tho
| horn-shaped lake on his map at the very
| place where exists the great depression
| OF similar shape to which it is now as
| signed. Some copies of his map, how
| ever, did not contain the lake, and CD
| itors of Ptoleny in the fifteenth century
| eXpurged it from his maps. Chiefly
| through the researches Of Linaut, Whtto-
| house, and, last Of all, Stadler, whose OBJ
| servations completed in February estab-
| lished the correctness of previous eX-
| plorations, the world has at last been
| convinced that the southern edge of the
| Fayoum exists great depression, which
is 800 feet below the level of the river.
and is separated by chain of hills from
the Nile, with which it was once con-
nected by the Bahr Josuf or canal OF
Joseph, and perhaps also by another
artificial channel.
1t is asserted by Mr.. Whitehouse and
the engineers in Egypt's service who ac-
companied him in his last journey in
| 1888 that the work Of restoring the lake
will prove comparatively easy. They
estimate that during the time of tho
| Niles flood the basin can receive co.
| 000,0O0 cubic meters of waters n day,
and that this volume, shut up in safe
reservoir, will avert all danger of tho
excessive inundatons that afilict the
fertile delta. From this reservoir also,
when the Nile is low, water can be sent
back to the river for purposes of naviga-
ton or irrigation. They also assert that
vast amount of land now perpetually
under water can, by means of this reser-
voir, be restored to agriculture; that the
| big lakes around Alexandria win thus
be drained, and the Mediterranean shores
OF Egypt will again resemble the mouths
of the Rhine and the coast of Holland.-
| NeM Norl, Sun